(Part 2) Top products from r/Futurology

My suggestion is to opensource it under the GPL. That would mean people can use your GPL code in commercial enterprises, but they can't resell it as commercial software without paying for a license.

By opensourcing it, people can verify your claims and help you improve the software. You don't have to worry about languishing as an unknown, or taking venture capital and perhaps ultimately losing control of your invention in a sale or IPO. Scientists can use it to help advance knowledge, without paying the large license fees that a commercial owner might charge. People will find all sorts of uses for it that you never imagined. Some of them will pay you substantial money to let them turn it into specialized commercial products, others will pay you large consulting fees to help them apply the GPL version to their own problems.

You could also write a book on how it all works, how you figured it out, the history of your company, etc. If you're not a writer you could team up with one. Kurzweil and Jeff Hawkins have both published some pretty popular books like this, and there are others about non-AGI software projects (eg. Linux, Doom). If the system is successful enough to really make an impact, I bet you could get a bestseller.

Regarding friendliness, it's a hard problem that you're probably not going to solve on your own. Nor is any large commercial firm likely to solve it own their own; in fact they'll probably ignore the whole problem and just pursue quarterly profits. So it's best to get it out in the open, so people can work on making it friendly while the hardware is still weak enough to limit the AGI's capabilities.

This would probably be the ideal situation from a human survival point of view. If someone were to figure out AGI after the hardware is more powerful than the human brain, we'd face a hard takeoff scenario with one unstoppable AGI that's not necessarily friendly. Having the software in a lot of hands while we're still waiting for Moore's Law to catch up to the brain, we have a much more gradual approach, we can work together on getting there safely, and when AGI does get smarter than us there will be lots of them with lots of different motivations. None of them will be able to turn us all into paperclips, because doing that would interfere with the others and they won't allow it.

Awesome! Here is the Amazon page!

Also, I haven't mentioned this, but the book is also a great read! The author doesn't deign to explain his complex ideas to the reader, instead you are left to work it out on your own, which makes the reading that much more enjoyable, especially the second read through when you can truly appreciate the intricacies of the writing.

Sorry. I doubt merely mentioning that I wrote a book could be castigated as "self-promotion", but actually offering a reference or link certainly could be seen that way, and I can never figure out out to navigate reddit's anti-self-promotion quagmire. I just can't figure out what the rules are on that issue, since it is so mod-specific (or mod-dependent).

My understanding is that once someone explicitly asks, I can then offer all the relevant information...as you just did, so here you go! :-)

A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692279849

It's a book I wrote over the spring and summer. The first section just collects and organizes mind-uploading thought experiments. The second section walks through my philosophy of mind (which is essentially a "psychological" model in which identity is tied to memory). The point or main argument of the book is that any minds resulting from an uploading procedure should receive equal primacy in their claim to the original identity.

Thanks for your interest.

Cheers!

Our co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky invented the entire approach called "Friendly AI," and you can read our original research on our research page. It's interesting to note that in the leading textbook on AI (Russell & Norvig), a discussion of our work on Friendly AI and intelligence explosion scenarios dominates the section on AI safety (in ch. 26), while the entire "mainstream" field of "machine ethics" isn't mentioned at all.

Stuart Russell, the man who literally wrote the book on AI, is concerned.

Plenty of prestigious people on the cutting edge of the research in the field are concerned.

Just because you've only heard the household-name-level famous people talk about it, it doesn't mean that the genuine, in-the-thick-of-it experts aren't concerned either.

As for the 10~20 years figure, you're right that it is unlikely that AI will be made in that timeframe. However, the claim was merely that it is possible to create with enough resources in that timeframe, which I think is reasonable. Since you care about what the experts think, here is a summary of the best information we have about when they think this will happen.

>Median estimates for when there will be a 10% chance of human-level AI are all in the 2020s (from seven surveys).

>Median estimates for when there will be a 50% chance of human-level AI range between 2035 and 2050 (from seven surveys)

___
AI: A Modern Approach is the best textbook on AI by far

That is not how it is going to happen.

The rift will not be among countries, but between classes inside each country. The filthy rich will benefit from this. The specialized white collar workers of the upper middle class will become richer. The lower middle class will disappear. There will be a huge, unemployed lower class with no work. It will destabilize countries without systems to deal with this.

If you want to read a good version of this, find a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's
Player piano.

A couple books that come to mind that do this are 2312 By Kim Stanley Robinson. And to a lesser degree Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. 2312 is kinda boring since Robinson does world building at the expense of story line and character development ... but it is IMO one of the most robust and coherent pictures of the future I've ever read in SciFi. Vinge's book is more balanced and thus entertaining. Both of them are mostly hard science books, that is they don't break the laws of physics per se. Great reads.

This is the latest sector report from RethinkX, the think tank founded by entrepreneur and technology theorist Tony Seba who literally wrote the book on the Clean Disruption of energy and transportation.

A few highlights of our findings from the report:

Industry Impacts

• By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50%. Production volumes of the U.S. beef and dairy industries and their suppliers will be cut by more than half.
  
• By 2030, the market for ground beef by volume will have shrunk by 70%, the steak market by 30% and the dairy market by almost 90%. The markets for other cow products (leather, collagen, etc.) are likely to decline by more than 90%. In total, demand for cow products will fall by 70%.
  
• By 2030, the U.S. dairy and cattle industries will have collapsed, leaving only local specialty farms in operation.
  
• By 2035, demand for cow products will fall by 80%-90% and U.S. beef and dairy industry (and their suppliers) revenues, at current prices, will be down nearly 90%.
  
• Farmland values will collapse by 40%-80%.
  
• The volume of crops needed to feed cattle in the U.S. will fall by 50% from 155 million tons in 2018 to 80 million tons in 2030, causing cattle feed production revenues, at current prices, to fall by more than 50% from 60 billion in 2019 to less than $30 billion in 2030.
  
• All other livestock industries including fisheries will follow cattle and suffer similar disruptions, while the knock-on effects for throughout the value chain will be severe.
  
  Food Cost Savings:
  
  
• The cost of modern foods and products will be at least 50% and as much as 80% lower than the animal products they replace, which will translate into substantially lower prices and increased disposable incomes. The average U.S. family will save more than $1,200 a year in food costs, keeping an additional $100bn a year in Americans’ pockets by 2030.
  
  Jobs Lost and Gained:
  
  
• Half of the 1.2 million jobs in U.S. beef and dairy production (including supply chain), along with their associated industries, will be lost by 2030, climbing toward 90% by 2035.
  
• The emerging U.S. modern foods industry will create at least 700,000 jobs by 2030 and up to 1 million jobs by 2035.
  
  Land Use and Environmental Impacts:
  
  
• Modern foods will be far more efficient than animal-derived products: Up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient than industrial livestock. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste.
  
• By 2035, 60% of the land currently used for livestock and feed production will be freed for other uses. These 485 million acres equate to 13 times the size of Iowa, an area almost the size of the Louisiana Purchase. If all this land were dedicated to maximize carbon sequestration, all current sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions could be fully offset by 2035.
  
• U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from cattle will drop by 60% by 2030, on course to nearly 80% by 2035. Even when the modern food production that replaces animal agriculture is included, net emissions from the sector as a whole will decline by 45% by 2030, on course to 65% by 2035.
  
• Water consumption in cattle production and associated feed cropland irrigation will fall by 50% by 2030, on course to 75% by 2035. Even when the modern food production that replaces animal agriculture is included, net water consumption in the sector as a whole will decline by 35% by 2030, on course to 60% by 2035.
  
• Oil demand from the U.S. agriculture industry (currently 150 million barrels of oil equivalent a year) will fall by at least 50% by 2030.
  
  Health & Food Security:
  
  
• Nutritional benefits could have profound impact on health, particularly conditions such as heart disease, obesity, cancer, and diabetes that are estimated to cost the U.S. $1.7 trillion each year. The way they are produced should also ensure a sharp reduction in foodborne illness.
  
• The modern food system will be decentralized and therefore more stable and resilient, thereby increasing food security.
  
  Geopolitical Implications:
  
  
• Trade relations and geopolitics will shift due to a decentralized food production system.
  
• Any country will be able to capture the opportunities associated with a global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

This book talks about it pretty extensively, absolutely incredible read, really helped me increase my respect for Musk tremendously:

https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0062301233

Of course, much of that could have changed since then. It looks like the glass door rating for SpaceX has climbed a point or so since I looked at it about a year ago, so maybe there's been some change. One of my favorite Musk passages from the book has Musk talking about how he was disappointed that barely anybody was coming into work on the weekends any longer.

Economic issues seems top of the list of futurological issues right now for many people, I think because it is the one thing technological change is forcing on us now & we are living through it. I also have the feeling we have very stormy weather just ahead of us on that front & that the headwinds of that storm are already starting to rattle our windows.

Of all my futurological reading, the one book that has been making the most sense to me lately about this is - is The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Jeremy Rifkin.

IMHO, he seems the best at clarifying just what it is that is that is going on & putting things like automation, technological unemployment & basic income in the right context.

In brief, his thesis is that we are moving towards a zero marginal cost economy on everything - industrial goods, energy, digital goods & as capitalism is basically redundant & unnecessary in this scenario, it's in the beginning of it's decline to being only a small part of our economy (he still see's a role for it in some areas, but they are small in comparison).

If you accept this premise, I think the next pertinent question is - how as societies do we handle the decline of capitalism ?

He outlines what will follow after this decline as being very similar to how we have always handled the non-profit sectors of our economies in developed societies now. However where capitalism has been centralized and hierarchical - whatever follows will be many flat, decentralized networks.

I think we can sort of get a glimpse of this now with blockchain technologies (I've no idea whether they will eventually play a a major role). But you can see in the work people are starting to do with that idea to expand it well beyond bitcoin, a vision of how a decentralized financial future would work.

Interestingly, if this thesis is correct - wealth redistribution & the problem of the 1% - becomes much less of an issue. A great deal of their wealth would evaporate as capitalism shrinks. The trouble is viewed through the economic eyes of just capitalism (with no nod to he future just around the corner) - this process looks like an apocalyptic disaster. Stock markets disintegrating, global debt defaults & (within the capitalist portion of the economy) huge economic depressions.

Which perhaps, takes us back to that pertinent question - how as societies do we handle the decline of capitalism ?

Nice!

For Musk fans I highly recommend Ashley Vance's bio of Musk: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. I did a review of Vance's book.

the movie "Her" was a good example in a lot of ways, the book 2312 has a lot of awesome possibilities in it as well.

And it has a wonderful answer.

Probably my favorite book ever even as a fan of math more than a practitioner.

I think I went through this years ago, when I was attending the then-called Singularity Institute's yearly conferences and reading books like Anathem. Now I'm working hard on reverse engineering the premises and logic behind the visionary plans of the movement. Why wait for these "expected" changes to occur, when I can push them to my consciousness/mind/body NOW. I can't wait for tech to catch up.

So no, I don't go to sleep at night in awe of what I expect or hope the singularity movement(s) to deliver in the future. I'll believe that when I see it. Instead I go to bed thinking: what can I do tomorrow, what is my next step, to turn myself into the advanced human being I know I can become?

If (since) I was studying logarithms in sixth grade, I should be able to step up to the plate on this one.

Ed. 1 (to remove a word)
Ed. 2 (to add a word)

> https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Life-Frontier-Computers-Biology/dp/0679743898

This is so cool, thanks a bunch! I am going to have a long flight soon, seems like a great read! :)))

Fiction: Counting Heads by David Marusek (and the sequel, Mind over Ship )

Local author, beautifully extrapolates technology hundreds of years into the future, explores the problems that becoming immortal as a race entails for humans. Delves deeply into nanotech, cloning, space colonization, information control and AI.

Has a complex plot with a lot of characters, the whole book seems to more paint a picture of the future than it does tell a story. (but the political/conspiracy thriller story is quite good also, if complex)

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Robots-Technology-Threat-Jobless/dp/0465097537

Martin Ford. Even people who don't like his argument have praised the book for it's clarity.

Read 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Great read about a future where humans have colonized the solar system.
http://www.amazon.com/2312-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0316098124

"The Holographic Universe" book blew my mind. Great read. Explains this all in depth then goes into how this model can explain things we previously viewed as impossible/paranormal/miracles.

Made me conclude 10 years ago that Jesus was just a dude who knew how to work the hologram.

Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 covers some of these themes, if anyone is interested.

To understand what Google is likely to be doing, I highly recommend How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil. Keep in mind that Kurzweil is now at Google, probably specifically for this project.

Keith I have just read deeper and seen that you have published a book on this subject https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0692279849/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have just ordered a copy of it I will read it as soon as it arrives to gain a deeper understanding of your position.
Steve

There is a terrific book on this exact topic that was also a NYT Bestseller: Rise of the Robots

Good Book from an Arctic expert: A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic

Jeff Speck has some good introductory writing on the topic. Check out Step 5 of Part II under the heading "Keep it complicated"

That PDF is kinda janky, so here's an Amazon link if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=walkable+city&qid=1563914434&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Excerpt:
> Welcome to the world of risk homeostasis, a very real place that exists well
outside the blinkered gaze of the traffic engineering profession. Risk homeostasis
describes how people automatically adjust their behavior to maintain a comfortable
level of risk. It explains why poisoning deaths went up after childproof caps were
introduced—people stopped hiding their medicines—and why the deadliest
intersections in America are typically the ones you can navigate with one finger on the
steering wheel and a cellphone at your ear. [9]

Im not so sure...
There is an interesting assertion from Tony Seba regarding fossil fuels and nuclear going obselete. He's saying that solar & battery are technologies and will continue to drop in price, like they have done for the last 30 years, and that the cost of fossil fuels will continue to be static or rise. When the cost of solar & battery drops below 6c/KWH, it will be cheaper for many people to produce their own power than to buy off the grid, because the cost of delivery of electricity over the grid is around 6c/KWH. There is still a place for utility generation and the main method of production will be solar & battery.

His book [Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030] (http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Disruption-Energy-Transportation-Conventional/dp/0692210539?ie=UTF8&keywords=clean%20disruption&qid=1462589361&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1 ) discusses this in detail.

Here is a [Short presentation] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L0JAnACdyc) and
a [long presentation] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM) .

Useful: Nuclear has a negative learning curve for the past 30 years - The more we research and deploy the technology, the more expensive the technology gets. Not sure if Thorium or new technologies are going to change this assertion, or if they can do so before Solar elipses them completely. Tony lays it out here

The Second Machine Age, by McAfee and Brynjolfsson.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society by Rifkin.

Ending Aging by De Grey.

Although I would personally argue that you get a good understanding of their material from the numerous talks they give, and learning the background science is probably more important for assessing their claims than simply reading their books.

Alan Weisman wrote a book explaining what would happen to the infrastructures and world as we know it if we disappeared over night.

It's one of my favorite books.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312427905/ref=sr_1_1/188-9700547-5479739?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406048129&sr=1-1

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy?wprov=sfti1

Here is a link to the first book, Red Mars, on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735

Here is a link that is kind of an overview of space elevators in the trilogy:

http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/content/space-elevator

Counting Heads - David Marusek

The Void Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton

Link to the book, for the lazy

There are options outside of the two extremes of unfettered classist schism and government-controlled income distribution. We will more likely see an economic system paradigm shift in the next decade or so. Something on the order of what Rifkin describes in The Zero Marginal Cost Society.

Books:

Capital in the Twenty-First Century: http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X

Player Piano: http://www.amazon.com/Player-Piano-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333781

Manna: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: http://hpmor.com/



Videos:

Martin Gilens & Benjamin Page: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/kj9zai/martin-gilens---benjamin-page

Haha, Chicago and DC are literally the two exceptions. The book Walkable City gets into the history. I'm jealous of you guys!

Science Technology Engineering and math education by whatever means. http://www.amazon.com/The-Diamond-Age-Illustrated-Spectra/dp/0553380966/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346894433&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=young+laides+illistrated+primer

Read Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. All of us can eventually be replaced by an algorithm.

Read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

The blueprint for this effort appears to cost $14.
Diamond Age

It's actually a hologram.

It's already written

"2312". Everyone should read Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312". Now!

https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Life-Frontier-Computers-Biology/dp/0679743898

I just finished 2312 which paints a pretty interesting projection of the next three centuries.

You should read the book, but the portion somewhat relevant to this discussion posits that capitalism is pushed to the fringes of luxury and niche goods and services, because all receive basic necessities of food, housing, and clothing. Unfortunately, as humanity settles the rest of the solar system, earth gets culturally left behind, too entrenched in nationalism and classism of its history.

I read Alan Weisman's The World Without Us a few years back, and in that book he theorized that if humans were to all instantly disappear, the first large pieces of our construction that would fail would be our dams. Apparently dams require constant inspection and maintenance to keep in working shape and most would fail very quickly without our intervention.

What the book didn't really touch on, and what I would be concerned about, would be region-scale environmental disasters that result from industrial facilities left unattended. Nuclear power plants, oil wells and refineries in particular. If we were to vanish, I imagine the world would instantly see hundreds of massive oil spills and probably within a week or so, various nuclear meltdowns. The planet can recover from that but I imagine it could create a massive die-off for 100,000 years or so, plus the lasting effects of radiation.

He's frequently thrown tons of his own money at his companies when they were in the early stages and struggling, even risking bankruptcy. Source: His biography.

Looking at the ISS from just one angle doesn't do the project justice. Economically, NASA is a stupidly wasteful place where money goes to die. It was routine for NASA to contract projects out to companies that would later demand more money and time to finish said project. NASA expected and budgeted for "problems" like this.

But the fact is, NASA wasn't built to be economically viable. Its primary benefits come from international cooperation, scientific discovery, and circulating money from the government back into the economy. It's entirely possible that the ISS saved us from a nuclear end to the cold war. It wouldn't make sense to start a project like the ISS today, but keeping it going is another matter entirely. The main argument for shutting the ISS down is that it is getting old, and maintenance problems are only going to get worse.

I have imagined the feasibility of getting a base on Mars going. You should consider reading the Red Mars trilogy for a great explanation of how it could start and continue. It's not only feasible, it's necessary.

The first video is just a summary of Tony Seba's most recent book, which is well-cited. As I said, I have some small issues with the details, but the general picture is accurate: it will be cheaper to produce electricity 24/7, including overcapacity and storage, with solar than with any fossil fuels everywhere except the high latitudes by 2030.

The key assumptions this case makes are that 1) Swanson's Law will continue to hold in driving the cost of PV lower for at least 15 more years, and 2) the assumption that battery storage will continue to follow its current curve of around 8% improvement per year (although Tesla's gigafactory is likely to put us slightly ahead of the curve starting in 2017).

If you want to argue against the 2030 projection, you have to argue that one or both of those assumptions is wrong. Few people are doing so, including most notably the utility sector which is already withdrawing fossil-fuel-based generation capital investments in high-insolation areas like California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, etc.

> IPCC can’t answer the question that I asked at the beginning of this chapter, because their models can’t even explain where we are today, let alone where we are going

...ehh, ok. But IPCC isn't a scientific organization. They don't perform climate research. They collate research done by actual researchers, and look at trends. If there are a thousand research papers from climate scientists and 100 of them say that climate change is fake and 100 of them say that we're all going to melt to death and 800 of them say that ok this is a legitimate concern but it's probably going to be ok so long as we're not stupid, IPCC looks at that and reports that maybe we're all going to melt to death, but probably not, probably things will be basically ok so long as we're not stupid about it.

If somebody says they think IPCC is wrong, what that means is that they think the majority of climate scientists are wrong. Which yes, appears to be exactly what this guy is saying:

>There will be a terrible price to pay if a false ‘consensus’ leads us to ignore the rapid changes which are occurring, and their implications.

So this guy disagrees with the scientific consensus. Ok, that's fine. Science is not a democracy. Just because most scientists think something doesn't mean it's right. If you want to ignore the scientific consensus and examine the data, ok that's a conversation we can have.

Is that the conversation you want to have?

Or are you simply offering this one random guy who disagrees, and saying that we should believe him instead? Why? Why should I believe him? Why is he right? Why do you believe him? What reason can you give me to believe this guy over the 800 other climate scientists who disagree with him?

Because I can't help but notice that this guy is selling a book. You are quoting a piece of for-profit literature. You yourself linked it on Amazon.

Hey, maybe he's right.

But what reason can you give me to believe the guy who makes money off of you being scared enough to buy his book over the majority of climate scientists publishing in research journals?

Do you see where I'm coming from?